ABSTRACT
The contribution to the first volume of the Handbook of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, on volunteering for the Games, was completed in December 2011 (Nichols, 2012). This second contribution is able to include results from the authors’ and others’ research on the volunteers and volunteer programmes. This chapter deals with the experiences of Games volunteers, updates information on related volunteering programmes and considers further the potential for a volunteering legacy and implications for other mega-sports events. To do this it examines not only the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games’s (LOCOG)’s management of volunteers before and during the Games, but also other programmes to develop volunteers and the ways local government has used the Games as a catalyst to develop volunteering. Themes running through the chapter are that management of volunteers at the Games will be unique to this very prestigious event; that the governance of the Games made coordination of delivery and legacy difficult and limited the application of a strategy, informed by a theory of change, to achieve this; and that each Games has to be understood in its own context.
